If you like fire and brimstone, you may want to check out Four Rooms. It certainly is a seemingly eternal punishment for something. This movie wouldn't have been made – ever – if it weren't for Quentin Tarantino. The basic plot follows a bumbling bellboy, played to an irritating tee by Tim Roth, through an evening in a hotel on New Year's Eve. It's a thin conceit to string together four disparate short films together – one of which is by Tarantino. For the most part, this movie is abysmal. The first short, for instance, features Madonna as part of a coven of witches. This coven needs to get the seed of a man so they can resurrect another witch. Enter the bellboy. That's kind of how the whole movie goes: Crazy plot that seems bound for failure. Then, enter the bellboy. It's not funny. It's lame. Having said that, Tarantino's short is pretty solid. Granted, he ripped off an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents , which was in turn inspired by a short story by Roald Dahl, to get his story. But it's still pretty solid. Basically, the ever-bumbling bellboy gets involved in a bet that may or may not end up with someone losing a finger. It's odd, suspenseful, and, really, would have made a good HBO short. Unfortunately, it's buried in this horrible movie. Sigh.
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